Westerners divide things into parts, often opposites, rather than seeing the whole. That has been the basis of scientific method and it has led to amazing discoveries. However for the complex problems we face today, I believe we need to see the whole interconnected system and diagnose the underlying issues. We seem to have difficulty seeing the whole system and tend to chop things up into parts – hence the lack of “joined up” government policy and strategy. Different departments of government pull n different directions. Another feature of Western thought is dualism – so it is either or, and if you are not with us you are against us and adversarial debate, winning the argument instead of discovering the truth – instead of let us see every point of view and find truth in the complexity of many different viewpoints . We need to give up dualism.

Another feature of Western thought is rationalism. Today we need to engage heart and spirit as well as head if we are to find our way through the situation we face.

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